"She would dance for joy at the most distant hope of it."
"Then it is for your sister's sake you would like to turn farmer?" William questioned, after a pause.
"I have no wish to turn farmer at all," Ralph answered. "No, no, my dreams and ambitions don't lie in that direction; but why talk about impossibilities? You came across to discuss some other matter?"
"Yes, that is true," William said absently; and then a ripple of laughter from the adjoining room touched his heart with a curious sense of pain.
"They are on friendly terms already," he said to himself. "And in a little while he will make love to her, and what will Hillside Farm be to her then? I would do anything for her sake—anything." And he sighed unconsciously.
Ralph heard the sigh, and looked at him searchingly.
"I'm in an awful hole myself," William blurted out, after a long pause.
"In an awful hole?" Ralph questioned, with raised eyebrows.
"It's always the unexpected that happens, they say," William went on, "but I confess I never expected to be flung on my beam-ends as I have been. If it were not for mother, I'd sell up and clear out of the country."
"Why, what is the matter?" Ralph questioned in alarm.